


Satin in a Coffin

by InsaneTrollLogic



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Bruce Wayne is a Bad Parent, Damian Wayne is Robin, Dark Bruce Wayne, Dead Robin(s) (DCU), Dick Grayson is Robin, Flashbacks, Gen, Ghosts, Horror, Jason Todd is Robin, Kidnapping, Stephanie Brown is Spoiler, Stephanie Brown sees dead Robins, Tim Drake is Robin, Timeline What Timeline, but a very good-natured kidnapping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-16
Updated: 2020-06-29
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:47:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24745558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsaneTrollLogic/pseuds/InsaneTrollLogic
Summary: At the behest of several dead Robins, Stephanie Brown kidnaps a Robin.
Relationships: Stephanie Brown & Damian Wayne, Stephanie Brown & Dick Grayson, Stephanie Brown & Jason Todd, Stephanie Brown & Tim Drake
Comments: 102
Kudos: 422
Collections: The very best of Stephanie Brown works





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Story borrows a title from my favorite Modest Mouse song.  
> Also, I refuse to tag character death on principle, but _read the summary._ Stephanie's got ghosts.

Up close, he looks younger than Stephanie had expected. Like the rest of Gotham, she’s seen the videos. The kid moves with the kind of body control that most adults only dream of possessing. She’d thought Robin must be well into his teens to move like that. Had figured that his small stature had just been that, a teenager below average in height.

Looking at him now, Stephanie knows that is not the case. Despite the faint scars from what looks like knife wounds, his face is round, his button-nose slightly upturned, and his cheeks soft and dimpled. His body is disturbingly shredded for a kid, but he’s definitely, absolutely, one hundred percent a kid.

A kid wrapped in a uniform that looks sturdy until you remember what happened to the last three Robins who wore it.

Stephanie’s own uniform feels heavy and slick, the oppressive, swampy heat of Gotham’s summer suffusing through the room. There’s no AC in the building, and the ceiling fan rattles too much to run it at anything other than the lowest setting. She listens to Robin’s steady breathing under the fan’s rattle, watches the pulse of the vein in his neck. 

“Stephanie…” Tim says from beside her. “I know I said we needed to get the kid out of there but-”

“I know,” Stephanie snaps.

“He’ll come looking for Robin,” Tim says.

“I _know,_ ” Stephanie repeats.

“I’m just trying to look out for you.” Tim’s voice is gentle, nothing more than a whisper on the breeze.

A chill runs down Stephanie’s back, despite the oppressive heat of the room, goosebumps rolling over her sweat-soaked skin.

She turns to look for the source of the voice, like she always does.

As usual, no one is there.

* * *

Stephanie was eleven when the first Robin died.

It was one of those days that everyone remembered. Even years later, Stephanie can picture the scene, the way her Mom had startled at the news on the television, wine glass slipping from her fingertips and shattering in a sea of red liquid against peeling laminate floors. She remembers the crime scene picture, carefully edited so that it was suitable for the nightly news, the awkward angle of the bare legs, the bright yellow cape spattered in red, the face carefully obscured. She doesn’t read about the extent of the injuries until years later, but even at age eleven, Stephanie could tell he wasn’t getting up.

They’d found the body of the suspected murderer in a back alley almost a month later, discarded like the rest of the trash in the streets. The police had made a statement to the public, noting that DNA from the body had been linked to DNA found on the scene of Robin’s murder. They’d finished the briefing saying that no physical evidence had been located and the police were not actively pursuing any leads.

Before the incident, most of Gotham hadn’t believed in the masked duo. Batman and Robin were something out of a fairy tale. Mom used them to scare Stephanie into obedience, even if Dad used to curse them both under his breath.

After though…

Batman wasn’t a myth anymore.

But he was still a boogie man.

* * *

  
“Fucking did it, Blondie!” Jason crows. “Jesus Christ, you know this is why you’re my favorite, right?”

“I’m your favorite because I’m the only one who talks to you.”

“Timbers talks to me sometimes.”

“You and Tim yell at each other sometimes,” Stephanie retorts. She only ever hears Tim’s side of the arguments and even that is mostly weird snatches, like a radio playing in a different room. Still there’s a special kind of annoyance in Tim’s voice that only Jason can elicit. “There’s a big difference.”

She can feel the air shift as Jason settles against the wall. The fan overhead continues it lazy spin, but she thinks she can feel the way the air displaces at his movement. The way the drywall groans as it accepts his weight. Jason’s always been a more physical presence than Tim, his volatile emotions cascading into the world around him.

Stephanie likes him.

Had from the first moment she saw him swing through Gotham, a small and chattering presence at Batman’s heel. She even likes his explosive temper. She appreciates someone with that kind of authenticity to his emotions, especially the bad ones. It makes it easier to trust the good.

“How the fuck did they let Bats grab another kid?” Jason says as he circles Robin, leaning close to examine the changes to the uniform, scowling at the katanas on his back. “Is he endorsing this kind of—”

And then his voice is gone, cut out abruptly mid-rant. Stephanie blinks at him. His mouth is still moving, but the sound is like someone’s hit a mute button, his form suddenly glitching. She has to shout his name to get him to notice and when he finally does she reads _fuck_ clearly on his lips.

Then he reaches for the swords on Robin’s back before flickering completely out of view.

A second later, the katanas fling themselves out of their holders and embed themselves in the walls. She hears Tim’s voice say, “We’re not _poltergeist_ s, Jay!”

Except, Stephanie is almost ninety percent sure that Jason might be a poltergeist. Or at very least, he’s on the verge of becoming one. She tries not to worry about it. After all, he’d made a very neat point. Robin’s clearly dangerous and she should have disarmed him well before now.

* * *

Joker murdered Robin Two on a chilly April morning.

Batman killed Joker by Wednesday of the following week, his body dumped unceremoniously in front of the GCPD. Batman didn’t even bother cutting the security cameras to the precinct, just tipped the body onto the steps in a heap, the clown’s mouth still twisted in an enduring smile. There was an odd precision to the wound pattern, and while the press speculated about the broken bones and their apparent contradiction with the autopsy’s manner of death-- _asphyxiation due to smoke inhalation_ \--no one has a reason as to _why._

Years later, Jason had smiled at Stephanie, his injuries blooming through his skin and she’d suddenly known the exact reason for the precision of the beating.

Joker murdered Robin Two on a chilly April morning and Batman tracked him down, inflicted every inch of the same torment on the clown’s body and then left him for the police to find.

“Got what was coming to him,” Dad muttered when he’d heard the news. “Who does that kind of shit to a _kid_?”

Stephanie, all of fourteen and uncomfortably aware of her father’s own unsavory plots, nodded into her bowl of cereal.

The city that had collectively turned away after the first Robin’s murderer turned up dead seemed more than willing to do the same for the second, even despite the video. You were allowed to kill the man who killed your son. And while the Joker’s corpse suggested… something a little too close to vindictive pleasure, Batman was still a force for justice in Gotham.

Except it didn’t stop with Joker.

* * *

Dick Grayson looks like a completely normal sixteen-year-old. He’s only an inch or so taller than Stephanie, with friendly blue eyes and neatly parted dark hair. He is prone to acrobatic feats when bored, walking into rooms on his hands or doing a backflip to get Stephanie’s attention. When she’d first started seeing him, it had taken ages for her to make the connection.

Because his form never wavers. He looks as solid and steady as anyone else in her life.

Understandably, she’d panicked the first time he’d walked into the room on the ceiling.

But if Tim is to be trusted, Dick Grayson always knew how to defy gravity and it would only track that he figured out that particular ghost trick far more easily than either of his counterparts.

He raises an eyebrow and jerks his thumb in Robin’s direction, question plain in his face.

“Already got the lecture from Tim,” Stephanie grumbles. “Jay’s on my side at least.”

Dick rolls his eyes and sits down next to her, kicking his legs out. She tracks him out of her periphery, knows that if she leans into his shoulder, she’ll manage a full ten minutes before the cold makes her have to pull away.

After a second she turns to the side and flicks his ear. Even the small piece of contact sends a shiver through her. Dick turns with a sheepish grin. For all his unwavering solidity, she’s never been able to hear him like she can Tim or even Jason before the inevitable deterioration of his spectral presence. Dick makes due though. He has expressive eyebrows, a malleable face and a complete lack of shame. Like Stephanie, he’s got a few words of sign language in his vocabulary, but also like Stephanie, he’s not patient enough to sit down and make a study of it.

He pushes himself to his feet and jerks a thumb at the unconscious Robin and then bounces a fist against the side of his head and points to Stephanie, his eyebrows raised in a question.

She blinks and then says, “Fuck, of course I didn’t knock him out! He’s like ten! That’s how you get brain damage! I found him like that.”

Dick’s eyebrows creep up farther.

“I swear!” Stephanie shouts, scrambling to her feet. “He was off on his own, no Bats in sight. I think he tripped a gas canister. Scarecrow’s maybe?”

She’s really not loving the thought of a fear-gassed Robin proficient in katanas figuring out he’s been kidnapped. It’s a recipe for disaster even before you throw in a couple of ghosts. And with her own history with fear toxin, she’s not exactly up for round two. Dick seems to have a similar trepidation because he taps on the edges of the swords embedded into the wall.

Poltergeist activity or not, Jason definitely did her a solid by disarming the kid. She’ll have to thank him the next time he manages to manifest.

Shit, she doesn’t have a plan and she really, really should have a plan for a potentially-homicidal, fear-gassed baby vigilante. She hadn’t thought much past her desire to get him off the street.

Dick must read the panic in her face because he flaps his hand and mouths, _talk to him_.

“Like you could have been talked into quitting when you were his age,” Stephanie snaps back.

Dick winces like he’s been hit, his face crumpling. Like it had been smashed with a baseball bat. Or a crowbar. Or maybe when it had just cracked against the pavement. He stands up staring at her from the other side of Robin’s prone body. He doesn’t flicker, but for an instant, she sees him like he must have been when he died, standing in a bloodied uniform, his leg bent at an unnatural angle, his hair matted in blood. He walks resolutely in her direction, the broken leg dragging as he steps straight through Robin’s body and then straight through hers as if he’s proving a point.

When Dick hits her, her body explodes into ice. She falls to her knees, her breath coming in short gasps. She looks behind her, but Dick’s a dramatic son of a bitch and he’s vanished.

Leaving Stephanie alone with this new, tiny Robin who shoots upright, screaming.

* * *

She’d met Tim Drake her first month on patrol. He’d been on a fire escape clutching a camera far too expensive for the neighborhood, eyes scanning the streets for Batman when he caught Stephanie climbing out of her bedroom window. She hadn’t even managed to tuck her conspicuous blond hair into her robes. They made eye contact for long enough that it was impossible to pretend they hadn’t.

Tim slowly raised the camera, snapped a picture and then bolted.

Stephanie, not knowing what else to do, took off after him.

The chase lasted about ten minutes. Stephanie was faster, but it seemed like Tim had done this route more often then she had. Eventually, her endurance won out and she’d tackled him to a rooftop. They fell awkwardly, Tim clearly more interested in protecting the camera than mitigating damage from the collision. He stifled a cry of pain as he hit the ground and if not for the picture, Stephanie would have been sympathetic.

"What the hell are you doing out here?!” she shouted.

“Watching.” Tim curled his hand more tightly around his camera. “Waiting for Batman.”

“Batman?” Stephanie echoed, pushing herself off of him. “Batman’s a psychopath!”

“Says the girl in the purple costume!” Tim countered, scrambling backward. “What are you doing out here? Supervillian in training!”

“Supervillian? No! I’m collecting evidence. My dad.” She broke eye contact, suddenly awkward. “Look my dad’s a piece of shit, but he’s still my dad. And if keeps doing the kind of shit he’s doing, Batman’s going to kill him.”

Tim winced. “Batman—“

“Is a serial killer,” Stephanie interrupted.

“—only kills guilty people.”

“Crazy thought, maybe he shouldn’t kill _anyone_. I get that two Robins died and that’s terrible but there’s been a bit of, well, _overkill_.”

Tim snorted.

Stephanie plucked the camera out of his hands, deleted the most recent photo and then handed it back to him. Tim frowned at the view screen for a second and then shrugged like deciding it was a fair reaction. “You know, he never killed anyone when there was a Robin around.”

“Lot of pressure to put on a _kid._ ” Stephanie settled next to him, weirdly comfortable with their little détente. “Seems a whole lot easier to just figure out how to not kill criminals. And then maybe the criminals stop arming themselves to the fucking teeth and Gotham goes back to the shiny happy place of our childhood.”

Tim let out a soft puff of laughter and shook his head.

“Gotham’s always been like this,” Stephanie continued. “If it wasn’t, we’d have never let a grown man with a fursona stand in for the police department.”

“Maybe Gotham needs _Robin_.” Tim played with the strap of his camera, the earlier mirth fading from his features. “It was better when he was around.”

“Yeah, better for just about everyone except Robin. I don’t think there are any more volunteers for that position.”

After a long second, Tim suggested, “You could do it.”

For a second, Stephanie considered it. Changing out the purple robes for red, yellow and green. Learning from Batman, being the moral weight that kept him from killing. But then the thoughts stuttered to a halt and she remembered the stories. The two boys bleeding for a city until they had nothing left.

“No,” Stephanie said. “That sounds a little like suicide.” She stood up, making sure her mask was covering her face. “This has been weird, camera kid. Don’t take any more pictures of me.”

“It’s Tim,” he said, extending a hand.

Stephanie didn’t shake it, but she did smile from behind her mask. God help her, she’s almost charmed by the scrawny lunatic. “I’m Spoiler.”

Later, she’ll think back on this conversation. The question that had betrayed a dangerous idea. The connections that tumbled through Tim’s precise brain. She’ll connect that with the homemade costume. With the way that the third Robin’s moves tilted a lot more towards surveillance and sabotage rather than fights in the street. The way he was only rarely seen next to Batman.

The way the blood had splashed against the pavement when his skull had cracked open on impact.

Stephanie was seventeen years old when the third Robin died and she screamed into the night like she’d seen a ghost.

* * *

In a mostly-empty apartment building in the middle of a mostly-abandoned street in Lower Gotham a boy in a Robin costume wakes up screaming.

Stephanie Brown pulls up her robes, and steps back into the shadows because it suddenly occurs to her that she might be fucked if the kid manages to report back to Batman.

“Boo,” she says.


	2. Chapter 2

The fear gas was probably, _technically_ , her Dad’s fault. Stephanie had been tailing him for days and this warehouse seemed like one of his regular haunts, so she’d drawn up her robes, kept to the shadows and climbed in through an open window on the top floor.

It became very clear very quickly that this was not a place built by Arthur Brown. Her Dad was a lot of things, but on his very best day he seemed like a dodgy knock-off Riddler rather than any kind of mad scientist. She pulled out her phone with shaking hands and rattled off the address to the video, as she captured the vat of chemicals. It wasn’t her dad’s warehouse, but getting this kind of thing to the police could save a lot of lives. Might even save the perpetrator’s if she managed to scoop Batman.

Behind her, she heard a thud and then a hiss and she turned around to find nothing but shadows greeting her. She walked towards them, still recording, only to spot a small cache of canisters that seemed like a more polished version of whatever was simmering in the vats below. She reached out a hand towards one of the canisters.

It prompt discharged the entirety of its contents into her face.

Stephanie coughed, the phone slipping from her fingers in surprise.

“Fuck,” she cursed, scrambling for it, but kicking it in her haste. It skidded across the catwalk and she lunged forward, grabbing it right before it fell. Only, when her hands clenched around the phone’s plastic case, her world tunneled, the ground suddenly spiraling into an empty abyss as screams built all around her.

It took almost all that she had to turn to her back, but as she did so, the temperature around her took a nose dive.

Then there were gloved hands grabbing for her. She lashed out, expecting to find Scarecrow in front of her, but as her vision resolved, it definitely wasn’t that.

It was Robin staring at her with a bloodied face. One of the lens of his domino mask was cracked and she could see where a bit of the glass had sunk into his eyes. His left cheekbone was caved in, giving his face a hollowed, inhuman appearance.

Stephanie screamed.

Robin took a step back, his face twisting into an approximation of surprise.

She didn’t know the face. It definitely was _not_ Tim.

Her fingers stiffened as he crept closer. She could see frost hanging in the air.

“Calm the fuck down, Blondie,” Robin said.

* * *

The kid’s got more than enough reason to be screaming, but Stephanie’s heart clenches at the pitch of it. His voice is still high and childish and it stabs at something deep in her gut.

“Kid!” she shouts. “Kid! Calm, the fuck down. My name is Spoiler. You’re safe here.”

Overhead, the wobbly ceiling fan keeps up its steady spin, tossing shadows from the street lamps against the ceiling. At this point, she’s at least ninety percent sure that Robin has been fear-gassed.

So that’s something at least.

She has a few shots of the most recent antidote, swiped from the hospital while visiting her mom last week. There probably isn’t a new strain yet.

Above her, the ceiling fan picks up speed and while Stephanie glances at it, Robin uses her moment of distraction to dive for the katanas embedded into the wall. They don’t budge, not even when he braces a foot on either side of it and pulls at the hilt.

The light that accompanied the ceiling fan suddenly shatters, broken glass falling into Stephanie’s hair. Instinctively, she puts up her hands to protect her head. Robin takes the darkness for an invitation to lunge at her. Stephanie’s knocked off balance with the first blow, but the kid…

Just kind of keeps trying to claw at her face. There’s obviously some skill to his movements, but fear toxin tends to rob critical thinking skills and, well, Stephanie’s bigger than him.

She’d won the fight pretty much the instant Robin decided to get close, neatly spinning him around and pressing his body flat into the floor as she reaches into her robes for the antidote. Out of the corner of her eyes, Jason throws her a two fingered salute and she knows who to thank for both the immobility of the katanas as well as the broken light bulb. She shifts her knee to keep Robin pinned and says, “I know you don’t appreciate this right now, but this is an antidote. I swear.”

The fear gas antidote is always a dicey proposition. The changing formula doesn’t always--or even usually--interact well with out of date antidotes. But Tim swears that it’s the same one Batman has in his current utility belt and Robin still after administration.

Stephanie lets up slowly on her hold, allowing Robin to retreat to the opposite wall.

She imagines calculations running through his tiny, squishy face. _Antidote, good. Kidnapping, bad. Spoiler assessment, uncertain._ She should be more worried about this. This is how you get stabbed by a preteen and Stephanie does not want to get stabbed again. The first time had outed her identity to her mother and while that had mostly turned out okay, she wasn’t a fan of the accompanying blood loss.

“Robin?” she asks.

Robin pushes himself shakily up the wall. Stephanie has to restrain herself from moving to help him, but she would hate someone approaching her while shaking off the toxin so she makes herself go still, listening to the steady whomp-whomp-whomp of the ceiling fan overhead. Her eyes have adjusted slowly to the darkness, but she doesn’t have a good read on Robin’s expression before he tries the sword again and this time manages to wrench it free.

It sails straight for Stephanie before she can even think to dodge.

Then it takes a sharp turn and sticks hard in the ceiling.

“Rude!” Stephanie shouts because it’s easier than acknowledging that this little piece of shit tried to kill her.

“Meta,” the kid whispers in reply.

* * *

“You believe me, don’t you?”

They were on a rooftop again, Stephanie with her hood down, turning the mask over in her hands, Tim wearing his home-made Robin suit, the omnipresent camera strapped to his back. From what Tim had told her, Batman hadn’t acknowledge his presence, but he also hadn’t killed anyone since Tim’s first day in costume. Might be a coincidence. Might be the idea that Tim Drake was _right_ about what made Batman’s mind work. And if he could figure out Batman, there was a very good chance he could figure out her.

“I think,” Tim said diplomatically, “that you had a highly traumatic experience and your brain is trying to fill in the gaps.”

She whacked him hard on the shoulder. “Fuck you, it wasn’t the fear toxin. If it was just the fear toxin, it would have gone away by now.”

Tim fixed her with a sidelong gaze. “You still see them?”

“Not that many.” Stephanie kicked her feet, watching the lights of the city below. She pointedly did not raise her eyes to the building across from them. “Not actually a ton of ghosties in Gotham.”

“Well, would you want to stay in Gotham if you were dead?”

“I barely want to be in this shithole now,” Stephanie answered. “So point to the ghost theory.”

“No,” Tim said through a laugh. “No way I give you a point for that.”

“You said you believed in ghosts,” Stephanie countered, her annoyance rising. “I started this whole conversation _asking_ you if you believed in ghosts.”

“And then you described a very specific set of circumstances that seemed to fit far more with _atypical reaction to fear gas_.”

“If it was fear gas, what the hell dragged me out of the warehouse?”

She didn’t remember that part of the evening, but when the warehouse blew, she’d been outside. Someone moved her. The only person she’d actually seen had been wearing a Robin costume. And it definitely hadn’t been Tim.

“ _You_ dragged you out of the warehouse,” Tim replied. “You’re kind of a badass.”

She found a smile breaking through her anger. Then, she caught movement in her periphery and despite herself, she reacted, raising her eyes to meet those of a boy in a dark red hoodie, staring at her from the opposite rooftop. After a second he made eye contact and pointed at Tim, his face twisted down in a frown.

“You see him, right?” Stephanie asked. “I’m pretty sure he’s been following you and not me.”

Tim followed her gaze, squinting into the darkness, but his eyes never landed on the boy across from them. “Why would he be following me?”

“Think he’s a little jealous of the new costume.” Stephanie was almost sure it had been the specter who dragged her out of the warehouse, but something about Tim made the ghost’s affable blue eyes darken into something sinister.

Tim, despite not believing her, puffed up in affront. “It’s not like I _want_ to be Robin.”

Except he did, at least a little. She’d seen it in the way he started to stand straighter, in the way he’d walked with a purpose.

“You totally want to be Robin.” It was a struggle to keep the smile on her face. Two Robins dead already and her best friend had declared himself the third.

* * *

“Meta,” the kid hisses and Stephanie has to put up a hand to stop him.

“Technically no,” she says. “I’m…”

“A medium?” Tim supplies, not at all helpfully. She hates the term almost as much as she hates being called a psychic.

“Spoiler,” Robin interrupts. “Father told me about you. He neglected to inform me that you had powers.”

Stephanie thinks about dissuading the notion, but if the idea of her having meta powers makes the kid less likely to attack, she thinks she might let him keep it.

But the idea that Batman has noticed her enough to give the newest Robin a primer rattles Stephanie more than she’d like to admit. “Batman talks about me?”

“He said you should be left alone. A ruling that I’m sure he will reconsider.”

The kid has a haughty, almost regal tone to his voice, the cadence bizarre to hear from someone with that young. This kid has _no idea_. Even Tim, for all his well-intentioned naiveté had some inkling about what he was getting into. But this kid…

Fuck, Batman’s his father.

“I saved your life,” Stephanie says.

“I would have been _fine,”_ Robin snaps. “My training is more than adequate.”

“You’re like ten.”

“Twelve,” he corrects, waspish and then looks embarrassed to have let that slip.

“His name is Damian Wayne,” Tim whispers on the wind. “You know, if you think that would help this argument.”

It wouldn’t help. Not in the slightest. She can’t think of a way to separate this kid from Batman without separating him from the alter ego. And Bruce Wayne has enough money and lawyers to keep his kid close.

Stephanie really should have thought this whole kidnapping thing through.

Her phone buzzes in her pocket, four times in quick succession. She pulls it out, careful to keep an eye on the kid.

Unlisted number.

_I can’t believe you actually grabbed the kid._

_Think I’ve got someone who will take him_

_But B’s looking for you._

_You’ve got maybe ten minutes._

Oracle. Stephanie scrolls up in her text chain just far enough to see a message her screen doesn’t want to display correctly. She should be pissed that Dick fried another one of her phones, but if it meant getting Barbara Gordon on the case, she’ll forgive him.

She’s only go ten minutes, but a lot can happen in ten minutes.

“You know all the other Robins died, right?”

The kid scoffs. “I’m better trained than all of them.”

“I found you drugged and alone on the streets tonight.” Stephanie narrows her eyes. “You realize that if I was almost anyone else, you would already be dead.”

* * *

Batman killed her father three weeks after Stephanie’s seventeenth birthday. Stephanie upon hearing the news, put on her costume and left the cramped apartment she shared with her mother not even bothering to sneak out.

Mom knew by now. She’d stitched Stephanie after one excursion went very very bad. They’d yelled and screamed about it for almost a full day before reaching a stalemate. The knife had been an anomaly. Stephanie’s entire MO was gathering enough evidence to put people in jail before Batman either beat them into a coma or killed them.

“Stephanie!” Mom called after her. “Get back here!”

Dad was a piece of shit who absolutely deserved prison. But he didn’t deserve to die.

Her phone buzzed. She glanced at the text preview.

_I’m sorry about your Dad._

Barbara. Always instantly in the know. Always predicting reactions perfectly.

Even from an acknowledged loose cannon like Stephanie.

Another buzz.

_Don’t do anything stupid._

Stephanie turned off the phone and after a second stashed it behind a loose brick on her fire escape. When she finished, she looked up to find Dick Grayson staring at her.

“Don’t have time for haunting bullshit right now,” she said. “You going to help me look for Batman or not?”

Dick stared for another second and then waved a hand for her to follow. He clearly knew the rooftops, but he took care to pick a route that Stephanie could handle. She followed, wondering when exactly she’d decided these apparitions deserved this much trust.

When he finally stopped, he turned and fixed her with a serious gaze. Then, very slowly, he reached up to put a hand on either shoulder. Stephanie shivered as her body reacted to the touch, the chills enough to make her breath hitch. Dick leaned down and pressed a quick kiss to her forehead.

Stephanie closed her eyes and didn’t move.

The chill deepened until it was hard to feel the simmering rage of the news.

Dick was gone when she opened her eyes, but she felt a little bit like she’d borrowed his resolve.

Batman was on the street below her, peering at something around the corner.

Stephanie reached down and picked a loose brick off the rooftop.

Then she threw it at Batman.

* * *

Damian blinks at her.

“You understand that right?” Stephanie says urgently. “If I had left you there, you might have died and that…”

“Was my miscalculation.”

“It’s not a miscalculation. It’s because you’re a _baby_. There’s a reason professionals have weight classes. Because in a real fight, size _matters_. The only reason you’re still here is because every single person you’ve fought has decided that they didn’t want to kill a little kid.”

Damian gives another futile tug on his remaining katana, but it’s still stuck in the wall. “That’s why I have these. To even the score.”

“And what exactly is that going to do to a gun?”

His face twists and Stephanie knows the hit landed just as surely as a punch. She would have loved to talk him down slowly. To gain his trust. But if Barbara was right—and Oracle is almost always right—then she has less than ten minutes before Batman takes extreme offense to her kidnapping his sidekick.

She takes a step towards him, hand outstretched like he’s a skittish stray. It doesn’t look like this kid’s gotten a lot of hugs. Batman never struck her as the touchy-feely type and she expects that combat training has to involve a certain amount of simulated _combat_.

“Dick Grayson thought he was invincible and got his head bashed sideways with a baseball bat.”

Stephanie sees a change when he hears the name. Dick Grayson had been tossed around on a few conspiracy boards as a Robin I candidate, but it hadn’t ever been confirmed publically. Good. Stephanie wants him to know she’s serious.

She presses on. “Jason Todd thought he could handle the Joker without backup. Wasn’t expecting a trap. And Tim Drake—“

“Was never Robin,” Damian spits.

“Was the only one of you fuckers with any sense,” Stephanie counters, voice rising. “He knew he wasn’t going to win any of those fist fights, so he stuck to the sidelines for most of the melees. And he _still_ wound up splattered on the pavement. Are you seeing a pattern here, _Damian_?”

He recoils at the sound of his name. “I suppose Drake told you our secrets, then?”

“Missing the point, you ornery little fucker.”

“Then tell me the point, _Stephanie_ _Brown_.” And it shouldn’t be a surprise that Robin knows her name. She’d been pretty obvious about it after Dad died, but it’s a shock to hear it wielded like a weapon.

“If you know me, you know what Batman did to my dad.” Stephanie’s voice is cold. Tim taught her how to do this. The plastic smile of Gotham’s elite circles. The way words can cut. “And I’m still here trying to save your sorry ass.”

“No one asked for your help. I will continue to act as Robin as is my birthright.”

Stephanie glances sideways to see Dick rubbing a hand over his face. Jason’s stunt with the swords seems to have knocked him momentarily out of this plane, but she thinks she hears Tim mutter, “What a piece of work.”

But he’s twelve years old. This kind of attitude doesn’t develop in a vacuum.

“Robin’s not a birthright.” Stephanie says. “It’s a curse. And I get that you have this weird death before dishonor mentality, but I’m going to tell you right now that’s the wrong call. Who gives a shit about dishonor as long as you’re still alive? You can recover from dishonor, but you can’t recover from the rest of it.”

Damian seems at a loss for words and Stephanie presses her advantages, slowly settling a comforting hand on his shoulder. Tim was the planner out of all of them. He’d have a twelve step program for weening Damian off being Robin, but Stephanie squandered any chance she’d had of slow progress when she’s dragged the kid to safety. All she can do now is smash as many of his fundamental beliefs as she can and hope that he finds the truth somewhere in the shattered glass.

He doesn’t pull away, but there’s still a scowl still pasted on his face. She thinks for a second that this was a miscalculation, that he’s going to use the closeness for a sucker punch, but then his eyes fix on something past Stephanie’s shoulder.

“Who the hell are you?” he asks the shadows.

The exact spot where Stephanie can see a delighted Dick Grayson.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IT WAS SUPER CUTE HOW OPTIMISTIC Y'ALL WERE IN THE COMMENTS.  
> [This chapter: Batman's here to wreck everyone's day]

Damian stumbles back, his eyes blown wide. “What did you do to me?”

“Besides administer an antidote and save your life, nothing.” Stephanie looks back at Dick who gives her an encouraging nod. “Did you see something?”

“Don’t be coy, Brown. There was a man in the corner and now he’s gone. I know you saw him too.”

“Saw a ghost, huh?” Stephanie drawls, unable to resist feigning the same disbelief that Tim always used to have with her. “I mean, it was pretty scary when the lightbulb just exploded.”

“That was you,” Damian says. “I don’t know why you’re trying to scare me.”

Stephanie scrubs a hand over her face. She is absolutely trying to scare the kid, but not in the way he thinks. Her phone buzzes in her pocket. Barbara again, no doubt. She doesn’t look. She knows where she stands on time.

“That was Jason,” she says after a moment. “And the loser in the corner is Dick. Tim’s kicking around somewhere if you listen hard enough.”

Damian’s eyes dart through the empty room, but whatever he could see is gone now. And if it’s gone, Stephanie doesn’t know how to make him understand.

“Stephanie,” Tim prods. “Repeatability.”

Right. Damian could see a ghost very briefly. And now he couldn’t. Spot the difference.

She sees it almost immediately and the realization must be readable on her face because she catches Dick out of the corner of her eyes with his forearms upright, his hands shaking side to side in a sign language cheer.

She’d been touching Damian when he saw Dick. How she’d never tried with Tim is anyone’s guess. Then again, her and Tim didn’t get a lot of skin-to-skin contact in costume.

“Would it be weird if I touched you again?” Stephanie asks. “Not like, weird touching, but I think I might be able to show you if I hold your hand or something.”

Damian looks skeptical, but his eyes are still scanning the room. Poor kid probably can’t stand to have an unseen threat. After a second he tugs off his glove. “If you try anything, I will remove your hand.”

“Only if Jay takes the safety locks off those swords of yours, kiddo.” Stephanie offers her own hand, not grabbing his, but giving the fingers a wiggle like she always did for her little cousins.

Damian takes it after a second’s pause and she carefully spins them to where Dick is standing.

“Grayson,” Damian says after a moment.

Stephanie’s proud of him. Not even a waver in his high-pitched voice.

Dick brings his hand up, palm side out, to his temple and flicks it out in an almost wave, his mouth working without sound. _Hi, Robin._

“Why can’t I hear him?” Damian asks. “Father would… quite like the opportunity to speak with him.”

Stephanie almost snatches her hand back.

Because she can’t put any of her Robins through that. They’d all loved Bruce Wayne in their own way. With a kind of ferocity that only Batman can inspire. Bruce pulled Dick out of an orphanage after his parents died. He’d taken Jason off the streets. Even Tim…

They’d loved him and they died for it. She won’t have them shoulder any more of Batman’s guilt.

“It’s not just you,” Stephanie says slowly. “Dick’s pretty solid for an apparition, but it means he’s not much of a talker.”

Damian nods, turning back to Dick. “What do you want?”

Dick’s expressive face falls and he points to the spot at the corner of his eye.

Stephanie’s been reading Dick’s gestures long enough to translate immediately. The mask. He wants Damian off the streets. No matter how much Tim chastises her for grabbing Damian like she did, that’s what they all want.

No more Robins.

She’s saved from having to answer when Jason flickers back into view. Damian doesn’t scream, but he does let out a sharp puff of air and take a half step back, his hand almost, but not quite slipping out of hers.

Jason smirks and reaches out to the edges of Damian’s mask, giving it a quick, decisive pull.

He’s not strong enough to rip the thing completely off, flickering back out of sight when he’s only barely managed to separate the corner of the mask from Damian’s skin. Damian reaches up as if in a trance and peels it the rest of the way off. He doesn’t quite do a clean job of it, bits of spirit glue hanging on his skin, an angry red outline marking the contours of the mask like a brand.

Like a ghost that never quite fades.

Damian turns the mask over in his hand and then offers it to the empty air.

Dick’s smile grows as he watches.

Jason swats the mask away and this time Damian does jump back, his hand slipping from Stephanie’s own. His eyes are closer to green than blue and they’re wide open, startled more than scared.

And maybe Stephanie has a chance at this after all. Barbara’s got them a way out and if the kid can see the ghosts of Robin’s past, that’s a damn good warning of Robin’s probable future.

Without the mask, he looks younger. More fragile. She can get him out, but she’s got to move and move _now_.

She reaches for his hand again, but then the windows explode inwards.

* * *

You didn’t win fights against Batman.

Especially not when you’re built like Stephanie. She was good in a scrap, sure, had a great knack for improvisation and more than a few lessons at the boxing gym a few blocks from her house.

But Batman was bigger than her, faster than her, and better trained. The brick bought her enough time to throw exactly one punch, which she delivered precisely to the kidney only to have her hand nearly break on body armor.

Batman reacted on what had to be instinct, batting Stephanie aside with enough force to crack at least one of her ribs. He didn’t follow through, though. Stephanie hit the ground with the distant thought in her head that this could have been far worse.

“Spoiler,” Batman greeted. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“You killed my dad, you asshole!” Stephanie struggled to her feet, one arm cupped to her chest for support. “Where the hell else would I be?”

“Cluemaster was a menace. You should be glad to be rid of him.”

“I am!” Stephanie shouted. “I hated him! He made my mom miserable. But he was my _dad_. I didn’t want him dead.”

Batman fixed her with a stare. “Gotham is safer without him.”

“That’s probably true, but you don’t get to decide!” Stephanie roared. “And while it might be safer without my dad, do you really think it’s safer _with you_?”

Batman faltered and Stephanie pressed on.

“Do you even see it? At the end of the day, my dad would have done his best to stop me if he knew I what I was doing. He would have done everything he could to keep me out of a mask.” Stephanie jabbed a finger in his direction. “And you know what? I think that makes him better than you.”

“There are no more Robins,” Batman said. His voice sounded different. Not the low growl she’d heard on the streets, but something human instead of the monster that lurked in the corners of Gotham. It was almost worth the sharp pain of her cracked ribs.

“Sure about that?” Stephanie prodded. “Because Tim Drake sure seems to contradict you. And the fact that you’re ignoring him isn’t going to get him any less dead.”

She’d wounded him. She could see it in his face. Her words may as well have drawn blood. She refused to regret it.

“Stephanie,” he started, “we’re on the same side.”

He ribs protested as she forced her spine straight. “I don’t know what side you’re actually on, but it sure as shit isn’t mine.” 

* * *

It looks bad.

From pretty much instant one Stephanie had known it would look bad. She’d pulled Robin out of a situation where he had clearly been drugged. She’d dragged him to one of her more out of the way safe houses, nestled in an area of Lower Gotham that didn’t blink when they heard screams at night. She’d kidnapped Robin. And his father was Batman, noted serial killer, with a definite trigger point that involved Robins in trouble.

It’s entirely possible that Stephanie had sealed her fate the moment she’d grabbed the kid.

As the glass shatters, she feels something sharp cut through the flesh of her shoulder and hears the sharp _thunk_ as the batarang embeds itself into the wall behind her. She hisses and grabs at the wound instinctively, but then boots hit her square in the chest and she falls hard against the floor.

Batman. Here. She should have dipped the second Barbara told her he was coming, but she’d dithered away her warning time, trying to talk sense into a kid that would probably need years to unlearn the mask in therapy.

She opens her mouth to explain, but Batman’s already lost three Robins. As far as he’s concerned, Stephanie is the thing that almost cost him a fourth. She can see that truth painted in the set of his square jaw.

She hears Tim shouting in her ears. Dick is at Batman’s side, pulling ineffectually at his arm, his presence no more real than the wind. The temperature of the room has plunged again and as the fist crashes down against her cheek, she sees tendrils of ice in the air.

“Father,” Damian says, his voice wavering and uncertain. He sounds like a scared kid.

And Batman reacts like he’s protecting a scared kid.

Stephanie feels her nose break, blood exploding from her nostrils and seeping into her mouth. The next blow from the weighted gloves caves in a cheekbone and she only just manages to throw her arms in front of her face to absorb part of the following punch.

The ceiling fan overhead rattles ominously, the blades a whir of motion. The batarang reverse course and pings uselessly off the side of Batman’s armor. Stephanie doesn’t think he even notices.

The sword embedded in the ceiling drops and sticks blade down in the uneven wooden floors next to them.

All of his Robins are _here_ and he can’t _tell_.

Batman’s gloved hands curl around Stephanie’s neck and her already spotty vision takes on an increasingly black patchwork. With Batman’s knee braced on her chest, it had already been hard to breathe. With the pressure on her neck, it is almost impossible.

“Father!” Damian says again, urgency in his voice.

“He needs to see.” Tim cuts through the static in her ears.

And she understands.

With the last of her energy, she reaches up with her free hand. The one that she’d offered to Damian only minutes before.

Jason lets out an unholy screech of rage that causes the ceiling fan to waver. Damian slaps his hands over his ears. The whole room is shaking now, the debris pelting them from all sides.

The pressure on her neck ebbs for just a second before it redoubles, but it’s enough to let Stephanie draw a quick, not nearly sufficient breath, and make contact with the bare skin under Batman’s cowl.

Then she hears a voice.

Stephanie doesn’t recognize it. It’s loud but not particularly deep, cutting through the ringing in her own ears.

It says, _“Stop_.”

Batman’s head turns, the light stubble on his cheeks scratching against Stephanie’s slackening grip. She can feel the coolness of his breath.

Dick takes a step towards them, his form wavering for the first time since Stephanie has known him. He shakes his head and the windstorm Jason conjured abruptly stops, the debris kicking up a plume of dust as it hits ground.

Tim whispers, “Dick, _don’t_.”

But Dick only gives a rueful smile, bending down so that he can look Batman the eyes. His hand moves up and replaces Stephanie’s fingertip touch against his cheeks. Dick’s substances is bleeding out of him as he does it, each movement leaving a blur like a photograph taken with too slow a shutter speed.

“Dick,” Batman says.

“This isn’t you, B,” Dick replies, the words eroding his form.

The pressure lets up on Stephanie’s neck, but she’s still gasping, the darkness pulling at her consciousness. She tastes blood in her mouth.

“Dick!” Batman shouts. “Are you still here?”

Stephanie’s hand has fallen to her side, but even the contact might not have helped. She sees Dick lean forward just like he had when he’d heard that Batman killed her father.

As he presses a kiss to Batman’s forehead, he shatters, his form exploding into a million shimmering pieces that drift through the air like snowflakes, fluttering softly to the ground as darkness swallows Stephanie whole.

* * *

Tim’s death was an accident.

It was a night when the city had rioted. Stephanie had been blocks away from the action, herding everyone she could, crook or civilian away from Batman. Batman had steered clear of her ever since she confronted him about her Dad. Tim though, she’d seen him just a few days ago, glowing with pride as he showed Stephanie a Bat-brand grappling gun.

A step in the right direction, he’d called it. Batman acknowledging his existence, giving him something for protection. If he had a Robin to look after, Tim promised, he’d get better.

She found Tim’s body in one of the streets that had already been cleared, the costume almost lost in the amorphous spatter of blood. He had the grappling gun clutched in one hand, the line extended, but grabbing onto nothing. He’d _broken_ on impact.

He’d tried to angle so that his feet hit first, but it hadn’t helped, his legs were splintered and judging by the size of the buildings, the fall had to be from at least twenty stories up. If he’d survived the impact, shock would have taken him only minutes later.

Stephanie stumbled and then threw up on the side of the street, the howls from the riot only a few blocks away constant roaring in her ears.

“So.” She heard the voice like it was standing next to her, but the body was far too damaged to make anything resembling sound. “Turns out I might owe you an apology about the ghost thing.”

* * *

The lights flicker, an almost strobing effect against the harsh fluorescents. Stephanie doesn’t worry. Flickering lights mean her friends are here. Means Tim’s here. She tries to reach up. She has no idea what she’s reaching for. Maybe Dick’s hand. Maybe Jason’s. Maybe even the new Robin’s.

All around her she hears urgent talking. Never quite screams but everything is brusque and clipped like each word could mean life or death. Batman talks like that.

So does her mom. At least when she’s at the hospital.

Stephanie’s hands are numb, but she’s not cold. She thinks it would be better if she could still feel the cold.

* * *

“Why’d you come back?”

She asked Dick.

She asked Jason.

She asked Tim.

It was the same answer every time, even if they couldn’t pull it into words. The same, goal bleeding through every action.

_No more Robins._

“And if it works?” she prompted. “What happens if it works?”

* * *

Stephanie drifts.

Her eyes are too heavy to open, but she wouldn’t want to open them anyway. When they’re still closed, she can pretend Tim’s here, sitting next to her and fiddling with his camera because he’s too shy to try for her hand.

“What do you think happens when you die?” she questions the darkness.

“I’m not the person to ask.” Tim’s voice threads between a low, steady beeping. “In my experience, after you die, you wake up.”

Stephanie tries to scoff, but it’s hard to move her face right now. She settles on a soft _pfft_ and a retort. “That’s exactly the same thing you do when you live.”

“Then I guess you better live, huh, Steph?” Tim’s laughter is a brittle thing, creeping past her ears like splintering glass. “What do _you_ think happens?”

She thinks… She thinks that Batman walks into the station and turns himself in for the attempted murderer of a seventeen year old girl. She thinks that Oracle manages to smuggle Robin out of Gotham and the kid winds up in therapy. She thinks that seeing a Robin survive long enough to stop being Robin lets Jason free of whatever was keeping him here. She thinks Dick’s last words might have already done the same for him. She thinks that Spoiler might be able to hang up her robes and head to nursing school like her Mom, or maybe even med school if she decides to dream big. She thinks she can find a way to help that is more than getting bad guys off the streets before Batman does it permanently.

She’s not sure if she says any of it out loud, but she hears Tim’s thoughtful reply. “Those are good. I think you’ll be great.”

“Those are dreams,” Stephanie says, even though she wants someone to tell her they’re true. “You can’t know that it’ll work out.”

“Neither can you,” Tim responds. “Guess you better live to find out.”

Stephanie’s dry laugh rattles her lungs, a shooting pain lacing up her ribs. “Will you still be here if I don’t?”

“If you die?” There’s a long silence and then Tim sighs. “Yeah, I’ll be here, Steph. But you shouldn’t be thinking of that.”

She thinks Tim might have stuck around for her more than Robin. She doesn’t know how she would have survived the last year without him. 

“How about if I live?” she ask.

“Yeah.” Tim’s voice is thinning the louder the heart monitor’s beeping grows. She thinks he might be lying. She hopes he’s lying. “If you live, I’ll be here, too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you want to say hi elsewhere: I'm on tumblr @last01standing. I also run a blog that slants towards original fiction @pkgwrites.wordpress.com


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